NCSE News / Anti-Evolution Actions Alert

As the November 7, 2006, general election approaches, evolution education continues to be a factor in campaigns across Kansas, even though the results of the August primary election practically guarantee a reversal of the state board of education's November 2005 decision to adopt a set of state science standards that was rewritten, unde

The race for the District 7 seat on the Ohio state board of education is in the national spotlight, thanks to a story in The New York Times (October 26, 2006), focusing on the endorsement that Tom Sawyer received from seventy-five professors at Case Western Reserve University.

At its October 10, 2006, meeting, the Ohio state board of education decided, by a 14-3 vote, to "discharge" a committee from the task of considering whether it was necessary to replace "critical analysis of evolution" language that the board removed from the state science standards and model lesson plans in February 2006.

At its October 10, 2006, meeting, the Michigan state board of education voted unanimously to approve a set of content expectations for the new high school graduation requirements in science in which evolution is appropriately treated. Previously, in September, the board voted to defer considering the content expectations for a month, at the behest of antievolution legislators who apparently sought to lobby for the weakening of evolution.

The October 2006 issue of The Lutheran, the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is devoted to the relationship between evolution and religion. Included is a detailed interview with Judge John E. Jones III, the judge who ruled against the constitutionality of teaching "intelligent design" in his December 20, 2005, decision in Kitzmiller. Jones is a Lutheran himself, a fact widely noted by the media during the Kitzmiller trial.

"A smart battle against intelligent design" appears in the fall 2006 issue of Paradigm Magazine, published by the Whitehead Institute for Biological Research, a leading biomedical research and educational organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Despite the victory in Kitzmiller v. Dover, Carol Cruzan Morton reports in her article, "the battle against creationism needs a steady stream of recruits," especially from scientists themselves. NCSE's executive director Eugenie C.

The attorney general of Texas, Greg Abbott, recently reaffirmed the standing interpretation of the 1995 state law that restricts the power of the Texas state board of education to review and reject the content of textbooks used in the public schools. Abbott's opinion, issued on September 18, 2006, was in response to a request from board member Terri Leo (District 6), who was among the most vocal critics of the eleven biology textbooks under review by the board in 2003.

Creationism emerged as a burning issue in Michigan's gubernatorial race, after Republican candidate Dick DeVos told a questioner at a September 8, 2006, campaign stop that he supported teaching "intelligent design" alongside evolution in the public schools.